Evaluating plans of work

Plans of work for construction projects are published by various interest groups with increasing frequency. Each purports to explain how (all) construction projects should be organized and it can be very difficult to assess their relative benefits and the circumstances most appropriate for their use. Techniques for analysing organizational structures have been available for some decades, but are rarely applied to construction projects. Such techniques can be criticized for omitting non-structural aspects of project management, such as leadership and other behavioural traits but they are ideal for analysing the strengths and weaknesses of documents describing formal organizational structures. A model for evaluating plans of work is presented and by way of example, a scheme produced by the Construction Industry Board (CIB, UK) is analysed by comparison with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) plan of work. The results show that the CIB scheme does not provide proper guidance for the management of projects, neither does it allocate responsibilities to participants. This analysis shows that such techniques are capable of providing useful benchmarks for assessing the differences between plans of work. They enable impartial assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of different schemes.